Felt better putting this up a couple of days after the anniversary:

This is the great nightmare when you are doing something long and hard—you’re terrified that it will be perceived as gratuitously long and hard, as some “avant garde for its own sake” exercise. And having done some of that stuff, I think, early in my career, I was really scared about it. The trick of this—I’ve got this whole rant about it—I think a lot of avant garde fiction and serious literary fiction that bitches and moans about readers defection, in blaming it all on TV, a lot of the avant garde has forgotten that part of its job is to seduce the reader into being willing to do the hard work.

—David Foster Wallace talking about Infinite Jest on Bookworm.

Congratulations to anyone who enjoyed an Infinite Summer.

(Can I express my quiet dismay over the idea that a fine tribute to a great writer is moving on and, sans name and domain change, becoming a book club? I have nothing against book clubs. I have nothing against Dracula. I guess I don’t really understand, though, why a thing can’t have a single focus, carry out a task until completion, and then just end.)